Staff Reporter

Chris Evans of Kiss Communications claims he is owed more than 2500 commission by Caudwell Group subsidiary 4U.

Evans is outraged that he has been told that unless he sends a letter confirming he will continue to work with 4U he will not see any of this money.

This is restriction of trade pure and simple says Evans. I am not a big player but I have done some decent business for 4U. But two weeks ago my bookkeeper was told that we wouldnt receive any payments unless we assured 4U that we would work with it again.

I have found 4U hard to work with and it was always bad at paying so I stopped connecting people. There was no point.

However Evans said he never told 4U that he wouldnt work with the company again.

He said his last commission invoice was submitted in July but claimed that it still hasnt been paid.

Evans was told that a six-month clawback period rule was part of his terms and conditions.

He denies this however saying:

There is no way I would have signed something like that. There is no way that I can afford to subsidise handsets for any distributor. I have tried to talk to the 4U reps but they wont tell me anything.

One distributor also said 4U had refused to pay him money he was owed until a clawback period had passed.

4U said: This is a private trading matter. We are operating within the terms and conditions of our contract with the dealer. The contract is designed to protect both 4U and the dealer.

The design shows herons in flight with crystals set in their eyes. Some of the phones were given to guests at Noronhas show during London Fashion Week. The rest will be available for sale later this year through distributors of Noronhas collection.

The P900 is smaller and more powerful than its predecessor. It has 16Mb RAM (compared with 12Mb for the P800) a 32Mb memory card (set against the P800s 16Mb card) a video camera for video playback video-messaging and a 65000-colour screen.

The P900 also looks more like a PDA as the P800s blue plastic exterior has been shelved in favour of a metallic silver casing.

The P900 keypad is still touch-screen however and the electronic flip keypad remains in place. It features Sony Ericssons QuickShare interface and has Bluetooth.

The P900 ships next month and will be positioned at the high end of the market at around the same price as the P800 on launch – 450 SIM-free.

A Carphone Warehouse spokeswoman said: Although we dont give out sales figures we can say that we have sold all of our stock. We were also aware of the emphasis and expectations that Nokia has for the device and so we ordered stock accordingly.

The hybrid games player-cum-phone was launched across Europe on October 7 on the back of a multi-million pound television and poster campaign.

Questions had been raised about the wisdom of Nokias new handset with many suggesting that the device would struggle in a gaming market so heavily dominated by Nintendo.

Pre-launch pressure wasnt eased when Nokia announced that it was expecting to see six-figure sales in the UK before Christmas.

Nokia business development manager Ray Haddow said: We are extremely delighted with the early sales of the N-Gage. We have always had a lot of faith in it and I am sure it will continue to prove us right.

(See Sharp End P46).

The car comes with a Sony Ericsson T610 connected to Your Plan with 120 minutes free for the first six months.

This should have read SIM-only kit.

O2 says that the cuts are designed to give national businesses more autonomy.

A spokesman for parent company mmO2 said: When we demerged from BT we needed to have a strong corporate centre.

Now we are much more customer-focused we dont need such a strong support network.

The entire mmO2 organisation employs around 13500 people.

Samsung UK boss Mark Mitchinson said Samsung had virtually sold out its entire stock until February and revealed that another leading manufacturer is in an even worse position.

Carphone Warehouse chief Charles Dunstone recently told journalists stocks of handsets like the Sony Ericsson T610 were difficult to obtain.

This means when retailers sell out of existing stock there will be nothing to replace it until near the second quarter of 2004.

A leading retailer came to me and said hed take 10000 Samsung products at any price because there just isnt the stock said Mitchinson.

We arent the only ones who are having stock problems. It is a global problem caused by poor communication between networks and manufacturers as well as low supplies.

Mitchinson blamed much of the problem on networks which dont present manufacturers with firm enough forecasts.

At present they are much too vague. We get told what they expect but thats give or take a couple of hundred thousand either way. And we need to be updating forecasts on a rolling month basis he said.

Like last year we are starting to see networks and retailers going into the Golden Quarter with demand rising expensive advertising campaigns kicking in and no product to meet the demand.

Mitchinson warned that that if stores werent careful their poor stock forecasts would affect sales into the new year.

Last year a lot of stores werent able to buy new products that were coming out in the first quarter because they still had a load of stock they hadnt shifted from the Christmas period.

The five men – Mohammed Anwar Mohammed Safdar Mohammed Sawar Gohur Iqbal Hussein and another man simply described as Mohammed – were involved with a firm called Mobile Phones Distribution in Bradford and had been charged with VAT evasion.

This followed a lengthy investigation which involved multiple raids on premises in Leeds in March 2002 as part of a Customs operation codenamed Dundee.

However the case collapsed when defence lawyers successfully cited an earlier case relating to a company called Bond House when it was determined that VAT does not apply to carousel fraud.

The Federation of Technological Industries is fighting to have Customs and Excises joint and several liability VAT measures quashed in the High Court by the end of the year.

FTI chairman Mark Cook said:

Im not sure whether this is good news for the industry. It may allow the fraudsters a loophole to get back into the industry. Then again it may be a good thing because honest businesses may be able to trade without fear of persecution by Customs.

Cook says that it looks unlikely that a charge of cheating Customs would stand up in court after this latest ruling.

Whether you are accused of evading VAT or trying to cheat the Revenue it is unlikely Customs will now win because of the legal precedent in the Bond House case.

If VAT does not apply to carousel fraud how can you be accused of cheating the Revenue?

Cook confirmed that a preliminary hearing was due to be held at the High Court in London last week which would confirm a date for FTIs fight against joint and several liability.

Well probably get a hearing within four to six weeks he said.

The Mobile Phones Distributioncase heard at Leeds Crown Court earlier this month collapsed leaving the five defendants to walk free.

Customs and Excise is now believed to be reviewing its legal position before proceeding with similar cases.

The judge dismissed the case before it ever went to trial after the mens lawyers successfully defended them with a legal argument.

Defence lawyers cited the Bond House case in which the judge backed Customs and Excises claim that carousel fraud was not an economic activity to which VAT could be applied.

The mens lawyers pointed out that if VAT did not apply to goods involved in a carousel fraud their clients could not be accused of trying to evade VAT.

That argument forced Judge Barry to dismiss the case although he noted that a serious fraud had taken place. He also dismissed an application by Customs to amend the charges to cheating the Revenue because the case was too far advanced.

The handset has an MP3 player Internet and wap access video playback and a fold out thumbpad keypad. The phones are being manufactured for Sierra Wireless by Flextronics. Siemens is supplying the GSM/GPRS radio components.

Handsets will be co-branded with networks and the company is looking to supply the handsets through distributors.